Tessa let out a long, shuddering sigh. The tension drained out of her frame. She melted into the mattress of the papers and the wood, and she melted back against me.
"You stayed," she whispered, the realization hitting her.
"I'm right behind you, Tessa. And I'm going to hold you until the shaking stops," I told her, pressing my face into her neck, inhaling the scent of her sweat and our sex.
"It might never stop," she said, a tear leaking onto the desk.
"Then I'm never leaving," I promised.
The knot pulsed, a steady, rhythmic throb that bound us together. I closed my eyes, feeling the storm outside battering the glass, feeling the heat of her body warming my own.
For years, I had been the savvy businessman, or the man who made problems go away.
But as I held her there, locked deep inside her, I realized I didn't want to fix her. I just wanted to be the wall she couldn't break. I wanted to be the authority she finally yielded to.
And for the first time in my life, everything was exactly where it was supposed to be.
TWENTY
Tessa
The release of the knot was a biological bereavement. It was a physical subtraction that felt far more violent than the addition had been.
One moment, I was filled to capacity, stretched to the absolute limit around the pulsing reality of Anders’ claim, locked into a stasis where the world couldn't touch me. I was suspended in the amber of his authority. The next, the pressure subsided. The swelling at the base of him softened, the terrifying, beautiful girth reducing by degrees, and with a wet, heavy suction that echoed obscenely in the quiet room, he withdrew.
I made a sound of loss, a high, thin whine that escaped my throat before I could catch it. It wasn't a choice; it was a reflex, a plea to the void. The emptiness rushed back in, cold and demanding, seizing the space he had just vacated. My muscles fluttered, spasming in confusion, trying to grip onto a presence that was no longer there.
"I’ve got you," a deep voice rumbled.
It wasn't Anders. Anders was slumping forward over my back, his forehead resting against my damp shoulder blades, his breath coming in ragged, broken gasps against my spine. Hisenergy was entirely spent on the claiming, the sheer caloric burn of his control finally snapping.
Strong hands gripped my waist. Massive, calloused hands that spanned my entire ribcage, fingers digging into the soft flesh with a familiarity that should have been terrifying but only felt inevitable.
"Up," Daniel said.
He didn't wait for my legs to find purchase. He didn't ask if I could stand. He simply lifted me effortlessly, pulling me away from the desk, away from the scattered papers and the scene of the crash. He cradled me against his chest as if I weighed nothing more than a paperback book. I was limp, a rag doll cut from her puppet strings, my head lolling against the scratchy wool of his flannel shirt.
I buried my face in him. He smelled of warm spiced chai, sandalwood, and fresh bread, a scent so thick and yeasty it felt like he had wrapped me in a weighted blanket. It was the smell of a Sunday morning where nothing bad could ever happen. It was the olfactory opposite of the stage lights that used to blind me.
"Bed," Daniel stated, his voice vibrating through his sternum and directly into my cheek. He turned toward the open door of the hallway, his stride long and steady.
We moved as a single organism, a hydra of need and protection. Anders peeled himself off the desk, buttons missing from his charcoal suit jacket, his crisp white shirt hanging open to reveal a chest heaving with exertion. He wiped a hand over his face, instantly shifting from lover back to guardian, and fell into step on my left.
Simon appeared on my right. I hadn't even heard him move. He was just there; a shadow materialized. His hand immediately found my calf, his long, ink-stained fingers tracing the line of my muscle, squeezing gently as if checking for structural damage or sketching the anatomy of my surrender in his mind.
They walked me to the bed, my fortress, the place I had defended with a brass lamp only hours ago against the phantoms of my past. Now, I was being carried to it by the waking dreams of my present.
Daniel laid me down in the center of the mattress. The sheets were still tangled from my earlier thrashing, a testament to the fever that had gripped me, but he smoothed them out with one sweep of his broad hand, creating a clean slate. A tabula rasa.
"Stay," Simon whispered, climbing onto the mattress before I could even shiver.
He didn't hover. He crawled over me, his lean body moving with the fluid, predatory grace of a nocturnal animal. He settled behind me, pulling my back against his chest, wrapping his legs intricately around mine. He was the spoon, the shadow, fitting his sharp curves into my soft hollows until there was no daylight between us.
"You smell like distress," Simon murmured into my hair, his nose brushing the sensitive skin behind my ear, inhaling deeply. "Saltwater and adrenaline. We have to fix that. The composition is all wrong."
"We're going to take care of you, Tessa," Anders announced.
He climbed onto the bed on my left side, sitting up against the headboard. He pulled my upper body so that I was reclined against the pillows, angled toward him, supported by Simon’s chest behind me. Anders looked at me with those piercing, icy-blue eyes, the eyes that usually assessed contracts for liabilities and clauses. Now, they were assessing me for breaks in my psyche. He was looking for the cracks the world had left in me so he could fill them with gold.
